Back from Infineon 10-24-09 with NASA TT

[shay2nak]

Originally Posted by Tracktimeplz

WTF is that a yugo in that last pic?

looks like 88-91 civic hatchback. The best one.

[heeltoer]

Hey Rob,
A fellow lotustalk member saw my car and pointed me this way. I was the owner/driver of that red GST Evo in your vid.

Hope I didn't get in your way too much, as you've already hinted about TT cars, my tires only last ~2 laps so hopefully I didn't hold you up too much afterwards.

Great footage, BTW, the video quality and video integration is superb. May I ask what kind of camera are you using?

Also as far as T11, to really take advantage of the paint, your leftside loaded tires have to be completely on the paint. On my hoosier R6's they make a loud squeeling sound but there is a noticeable increase of traction on my AWD chassis. It was helped that weekend by the fact that someone removed (or hit) the apex tire bundle out of the way and it was much easier to keep the car on the inside using a late apex line. For the lotus I suspect the classic equal radius arc is ideal, but driving over the paint mid corner may still work. (It did when I raced in the Formula Russell cars 2yrs back.)

Glad to have you in TT, hope to cya next year.

Cheers,
-yang

#42 TTA

[robains]

Hi Yang,

I was impressed on just how fast you were in your Evo -- you TT guys seem to know the in/outs of how to get the most out of the car within the class restrictions. Same with the driver in the blue TTA Z06. You and the blue Vette were very good about letting me by, wouldn't have mattered either way, just too much traffic all around. But now that I understand some of the TT strategy it should help me in the future, but getting into the 1:41's is gonna be a tall order to challenge Brian Lock in TTU with his GT-R (gonna think impossible, but who knows).

I used to track a blue 04 STi and AWD definitely helps coming out of slow speed corners -- my STi was very similar to how well yours came out of T11 and T7.

Camera is a circa 2006 Sony HDR-HC3 -- It's HD quality using MiniDV. Probably better and cheaper units out now.

My IQ3 dash/logger is from RacePak IQ3 dash/data logger (had no idea they were using one of my video's on their web site... hmmmm, hope I get a price break!!)

The software I use to get my IQ3 telemetry to overlay on my video footage is from Track Vision

I modified a few track vision files to obtain the specific IQ3 data elements I wanted to display (pretty easy process, they have an SDK, I can also provide the files if anyone wants to do something similar).

To get the video quality is another story. Basics:

1. Transfer MiniDV in HDV format to my Mac using Final Cut Pro 7.

2. De-interlace entire footage with fields set to (Upper - odd) matches my Camcorders format (important step to avoid shutters or jaggies) source is 1080i/60 - web output is progressive hence need to de-interlace.

3. Export to DivX Pro 6.8 1920 x 1080 (insane quality with some shaping and light sharpening, H.263 opt) - this takes 8-10 hours of processing on my MacPro (quad core).

4. Use DataLinkII software (comes with IQ3) to export telemetry data to IQ3 readable format (this is really just a CSV file that can be read by Excel).

5. Use TrackVision 2.1 to import DivX file (step 3) and import the IQ3 data (step 4) - synch start point, set output file to MPEG-4 1280 x 768 quality 1 (yes quality 1, I think this is a bug in TV 2.1) and viola a 1 GB HD file with about 15 minutes of footage. Still a big file, but no where near the 8GB original source.

For some reason, YouTube seems to do a better job of smooth playback vs. Vimeo -- I've reported the problem to Vimeo and they're working on it.

If you need more details, PM me and I'll give you my Email and we can take it from there, don't wanna bore these folks too much.

Great fun at the event, hopefully I can do some more events and bring some better car parts (and bigger balls) more worthy of my TTU class.

Rob.

[usurbrain]

Yang, I think it's time to upgrade the EVO to a Lotus. Wanna buy mine?

[robains]

Not so sure about trading in the EVO for a Lotus, there was a VERY fast gray EVO that passed me and left me wishing for more power and AWD. Have it in one of my other videos from Session 1, I think. And TTA is supposed to be a slower class than TTU (which is what I was in). I think Yang did a pretty damn good job posting those times with a TTA EVO.

I've been going over my telemetry (DataLink II software) and marking 3 sectors -- with these sector times using "predictive best" it was showing 1:49.7. Predictive basically takes the best sector times and strings them together for what my best lap "could be" if I were able to put together all 3 of my best sector times.

Rob

[SteveLevin]

My thoughts about your lap are twofold:

1) as you mentioned, turn 2 wasn't your friend. Because of that camber change at the top, the entry is critical. Slow up a touch more on the entry and make sure the car in ON that kerbing to the left, and turn in at the very end of the kerbing. Then you can really get on the power exiting turn 2.

2) In turn 8, make the esses slightly less of a smooth arc. Turn in sharper for the first left, then stay on that kerbing to the end of it, and then turn right and feed in tons of power.

Aside from that your laps looked very good.

Steve

[robains]

Steve,

Thanks, agree on both points and my telemetry bares out your same observations. I also think T10 can be done faster, I just never did - the balls factor.

On a side note, when I did hit T2 correctly, I'd have so much more speed I'd be bouncing off the rev limiter in 3rd before the braking point for T3, a shift to 4th would have been worthless -- I did feel like the gearing was just NOT good for Infineon.

Rob.

[turbophil]

raise rev box to 9,000...that's what I had to do to get through T7 and T10 at HPT...

[robains]

Stock oil pump gears Mr. Phil -- geeez, you just want me to blow up again don't you!!

[turbophil]

Ah. Didn't realize that. Who has stock oil pump gears anymore????

Nevertheless, I have a solution for you! Get new gears!!!

[robains]

The new gears are going in that new stroker motor with TVS you're sending me

Here's a pic of my theorectical best lap (assuming clear lap and me hitting all my marks correctly) - seems Session 4 was faster 1:47.679.

Sorry for image width, but any smaller and numbers would not be readable.

Rob

[robains]

Guess I better include a track map with segments for reference: